1817

1817 was 54 years before the founding of the City of Birmingham and two years before Alabama became a state.

Events

• August 15: Alabama Territory was created by splitting Mississippi Territory in half. William Wyatt Bibb was appointed the territorial Governor.
• Cahaba Valley Baptist Church was founded.
• John Hanby discovered a seam of brown iron ore in Blount County.
• A hundred or so families from the Pendleton District of western South Carolina came to central Alabama to settle.

Works

• Seal of Alabama

Individuals

• John Looney relocated his family and slaves to Beaver Valley.

Births

• May 29: Walter Drennen, minister
• October 28: Ruth Reed Massey, first white child born within Birmingham's present corporate limits
• Winter: Moses Fields, first white child born in Jefferson County
• Samuel Tate, railroad executive and shareholder in the Elyton Land Company

Context

In 1817, James Monroe succeeded James Madison as President. The first Seminole War began in Florida. Mississippi was admitted as a state.

Notable births in 1817 included Confederate general Braxton Bragg, piano manufacturer Theodor August Heintzman, botanist Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, writer Henry David Thoreau, Bahá'í Faith founder Bahá'u'lláh, and scholar Theodor Mommsen. Notable deaths included astronomer Charles Messier, novelist Jane Austen, Princess Charlotte of Wales, and Emperor Tekle Giyorgis I of Ethiopia.

1810s

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